Goggles
by Julia456
Summary: Or, "The M-Rated Stuff I Can't Put In 'Quite Peculiar'."
1. Goggles

**Note:** Loosely inspired by some very funny fanart done by TobuIshi, which you can go find for yourself on DeviantArt 'cause I don't feel like trying to outsmart the URL police.

(And if - in the spirit of said fanart - you wish to imagine that, within a 20 mile radius of the events of this fic, there are lorises laughing and girls turning gay, then by all means, go right ahead and do so. :D )

Finally, I would like to point fingers at Cardboard Edward and Beboots, who utterly failed to discourage me. :P

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Deryn comes into the study announcing, "Look what I found!"

Her voice echoes off of the mostly bare walls, and Alek looks up. When she left him, he'd been putting books away, but now he's sitting behind his desk again, sorting through papers piled in stacks everywhere.

For a moment she's taken aback: why does he have so _many_ papers, and when did he get them all?

He seems confused, too - about what she's showing him. She gestures at the fancy blue pilot's jacket she's wearing, and the pilot's goggles pushed back on her head. Both are his, from his days as an unwilling guest on the _Leviathan_.

Recognition flashes across his face, followed by pleased surprise. "I thought those had been lost. Where were they?"

Deryn can already tell that she's going to like this study. The big window behind the desk overlooks the back garden, and right now sunlight is slanting in, thick and cheerful gold. It finds all the reddish bits of Alek's hair and turns them to bright copper.

She shifts some papers and perches one hip on the edge of the desk, her right knee just grazing the arm of his chair. "Mixed in with my old kit. Probably Ma's fault – she's not good with insignia."

His eyebrows go up. "She can't tell the difference between a British midshipman's uniform and that of an Austrian walker pilot?"

"Aye, well, like I said. And we were packing in a hurry, remember."

"Yes," he says, smiling warmly, which does marvelous things to her innards. "I do. But why are you wearing them now?"

She shrugs. "Just for a lark."

His smile turns speculative. "Are you going to keep them on all day?"

She pulls the goggles down over her eyes and grins at him. "Thinking about it, Clanker."

"Then you may want to adjust the straps on the goggles," he says, returning to his stacks of paper. "They do tend to pinch after a while."

"I'll bear it in mind," she says, dry, shoving the goggles back up on her head. It makes her hair stick up at all angles, but she doesn't care. He continues on with whatever deadly dull business he's set for himself, and she stays where she is, watching him.

A new house, no one else about, hours yet before they're expected anywhere… and he's sorting papers.

Pure dead _clueless_.

She pushes off from the desk and goes to the window, peering out at the garden. It's all right, she supposes, but they'll have to hire someone to keep it up. She's no barking gardener, and neither is Alek.

For that matter, they'll want some curtains, too.

"You know," she says, going up on her toes and craning her neck up and to both sides, checking all the possible sightlines, "I always loved the way you looked in this coat."

"Oh?" he says, in the tone that tells her he's not really listening.

"Used to have all sorts of thoughts about it." Satisfied, she drops back onto her heels and turns around. "Well, not _thoughts_ so much as _fantasies_, I suppose. Wicked sorts of things."

_That_ gets his attention. He's been rifling through a stack, but now he freezes and twists in his chair to look at her. Light catches his green eyes and finds gold there, too. "You did?"

"Oh, aye." She finds a spot on the edge of the desk again – only this time, directly in front of him, so that he has to sit back and look at her. She angles her hips forward. Runs the toes of one foot up the inside of his calf. "Particularly the way you looked when you were right off the engines. I used to wonder what it'd be like, to get your hands on me then."

He swallows, eyes darkening even as he keeps his voice light: "That wouldn't seem to have been the best time. I was usually half-frozen and covered in engine grease."

"Mm," she says, leaning over, undoing the buttons of his shirt. Slow and methodical and deliberately teasing. She holds his gaze. "I would've warmed you up."

"Er – yes - but the engine grease," he says. As if this is really a problem that ought to be solved.

"Aye, smeared all over my skin." She gets to the last button and tugs the shirttails free of his trousers, sliding her hands across the flat, wiry planes of his chest and stomach (bless that fencing); his breath hitches and her pulse speeds up. "Filthy mess, really. But you see, it wouldn't matter."

"It wouldn't?" His hands reach up and settle on her waist, tugging her off the edge of the desk and onto his lap. The chair's not quite roomy enough to allow them both, so he shifts forward as far as he can without dumping them onto the floor.

She shakes her head while he laces his fingers at the small of her back to hold her in place. They're roughly the same height these days; in this position, however, she's taller than he is. She grins down at him. "Not a squick. I'd be too keen to get you inside me."

"I suppose I can't argue with that. Still, it would leave rather a lot of evidence," he notes, being very objective for a man who just forgot how to breathe. "Would we try to hide this encounter?"

" 'Course we would. So you'd help me clean up," she says, shedding the pilot's jacket and tossing it on the desk behind her. Papers gust and fly, but he doesn't voice a word of complaint. "I'd let you wash my back."

He likes her wet and soapy, she knows from prior experience. And indeed, a new, calculating gleam enters his eyes. "Nowhere else?"

"You'd have to work for _that_, love," she says, and is quite pleased when he takes the hint and kisses her. It means she has to shift in closer, firm against that wonderful hardness in his trousers. One of his hands leaves her spine and squeezes her bum, which is barking nice too.

Electricity crackles bright and hot between them, same as it ever has. Only now they both know what comes next, which makes it even better.

Deryn bites his lower lip, just hard enough to elicit a moan. Then she leans back, gets hold of the bottom hem of her shirt as well as the chemise beneath, and pulls them both off over her head.

He looks her up and down and swallows again. Always a gratifying reaction, she must admit; though the first time she'd done that maneuver, she'd half expected him to faint. Clanker.

He clears his throat and, voice unsteady, asks, "And w-where onboard would this have happened?"

"Anywhere," she says, then inhales sharply as he dips his head and begins planting kisses along her collarbone, down between her breasts, mouth hot and wet, stubble rasping, mustache tickling. She puts one hand on the back of his head, threading her fingers through his lovely hair to hold him close.

He works his way left, then stays there for a while, doing things with his tongue she never imagined at age fifteen. Her own head tips back and her eyes flutter closed and her body moves in rocking waves against his. It's getting more difficult to string words together, but she finishes her thought, voice coming in gasps: "M-my old cabin, probably."

He breaks off sucking and kissing to frown and say, "That seems an unlikely –"

"Barking _spiders_, Alek!" she exclaims, interrupting his blether, exasperated beyond belief. She pushes him away and climbs off his lap, the better to stand in front of him with her hands on her hips and a scowl on her face. "It's meant to be _pretend_, not a sodding battleplan! Now shut your gob and get on with rogering me!"

"Is _that_ what we're doing?" he asks, green eyes wide with false innocence. "I thought we were reminiscing."

She harrumphs (she'd roll her eyes, but he's not looking at her face) – and then somehow she's sitting up on the desk, legs wrapped around his hips, and he's kissing her fiercely, and the papers are everywhere except where they ought to be.

It takes a while to wind up his clockworks properly, but blisters, it's worth it.

She grins into his kisses, enjoying the heat-on-heat feel of his bare torso against hers, the soft flutter of his undone shirt, the way they fit together _just_ _right_. Then she grabs his shirt's lapels, pulling him with her as she scoots backwards toward the middle of the desk.

The pilot's jacket bunches and shifts beneath her, making her slip sideways. She curses, shoving at it, and he laughs. She's prepared to scowl, but he stops her with a kiss that curls her toes and makes her dig her fingers into his back.

And maybe she whimpers a bit. Maybe.

"Deryn - the neighbors," he says, fumbling one-handed to shuck his belt and trousers. The other hand is braced on the wood of the desk, holding him above her.

"Can't see a bloody thing," she says. The view's quite nice from her angle, however, particularly once he gets those trousers off. She pushes at his shoulders until the shirt goes too, and that's even better. "I checked."

"Ah. Very thorough of you, as usual."

She gets her own trousers undone and does a little wiggle, trying to remove them without sitting up. "Wouldn't want them getting the wrong impression of us."

"Indeed," he says, and tugs down sharply on her britches. She arches her back to help him along, which makes the metal rims of the goggles dig into her scalp. It's not painful; just barking annoying.

Once they've dealt with the last of the clothes, she moves to pull the goggles off altogether… but he grabs her wrist and holds her arm there, pinned above her head.

The sly, mischievous glint in his eyes, she figures, would have been enough to stop her anyway.

"No," he says firmly.

She raises an eyebrow. "And why not?"

He lowers his head until his mouth grazes her ear. Low and hungry, he murmurs, "Since we're discussing old fantasies…"

She swallows. "Aye?"

"Leave the goggles on."


	2. Maneuvers

**Note: **This is a sort-of kind-of prequel to "Goggles", and it's for ItalianRose, who asked to see "the first time she'd done that maneuver." ;)

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Her shirt slides off her arms and onto the floor with a swoosh of fabric and the tiniest _clack_ of buttons on wood. Deryn spares a glance just long enough to make certain it hasn't landed anywhere odd, then looks forward again.

Alek is staring at her, eyes so wide that she can see white nearly all the way round. He looks pale and stricken. He looks as if he's likely to fall off the bed and join her shirt on the floor.

"What's wrong?" she asks.

Barking spiders, it's not _her_, is it?

She'd stripped off her shirt because, as lovely as it is when Alek works his hands beneath it and feels her up, she's dead certain it's going to be a thousand times better to have the sodding thing out of the way altogether.

But now she's wondering if maybe she shouldn't have done it. Maybe he thinks it was too forward of her; it's only been a few months since they've started this kissing business, after all, and Clankers seem to be skittish whenever biology gets involved.

Or maybe he's not impressed by what she's just revealed. Deryn fights the urge to look down at herself and, for one of the few times in her life, begins to wish her diddies were more than just a suggestion.

He swallows – once, twice, three times. "N-nothing," he manages, although his voice sounds funny, and she's still not too keen on his expression.

An uncomfortable chill runs across her shoulders (and her front, though she's trying not to think about that part of her, presently). "D'you – should I not have done that?"

"No!" he says hastily. "I mean – God's wounds, I – It's only that I-I wasn't expecting it."

Now it's her turn to swallow. _I wasn't expecting it_ sounds an awful lot like _I wish you hadn't_. They'd been on the bed, kissing and having fun messing about – rather a lot of fun – and she's gone and ruined it with one quick maneuver.

She suddenly feels perfectly daft, sitting there with her shirt off. "Oh," she says. Her arms fold across her chest before she can stop herself. "Sorry, then."

There's a moment of silence. Just as she's thinking she ought to pick up her shirt and leave, he says, awkwardly, "Deryn – I didn't mean to imply that I didn't, um – enjoy it. You. I actually – I've been wondering for some time, I suppose, what you – ah – how you might look -"

"Alek," she says, cutting him off, starting to smile despite herself, "should I put my bloody shirt back on or not?"

"Please don't," he says in a rush, almost before she finishes the question. He takes a breath. "Please don't," he repeats, more normally. His eyes flick down to her chest and back up again, and this time, instead of looking poleaxed, he looks…

Oh. Blisters.

Her breath catches. Her arms uncross all on their own, and she scoots closer to him. She's intensely aware of her bare skin again – but now it's because electricity is crackling along every square inch of it.

"I reckon I can wait a squick, in that case," she says. Her voice sounds girly. Breathless. She doesn't sodding care.

Hesitantly, he puts one hand on her shoulder (of all the barking places). His palm is warm; the touch is gentle. He leans in and kisses her – once, twice, three times. Sweet and maddeningly soft.

He touches her cheek and clears his throat. "I would very much appreciate it."

Aye, that's her prince: still treating her like a lady even when she's perched on his bed, shirt off and ready to pounce.

She grins.

"Lower than that, _Dummkopf_," she says, grabbing his hand off her shoulder and moving it where she wants it. She's pleased to find she was right – it _is_ better without fabric involved. "And maybe you could take your shirt off too, aye?"

"Yes," he says. He grins back at her, dark green eyes dancing. "That only seems fair."

She laughs and helps him along with that.


	3. Sins

In the beginning, Alek spent a quite a lot of time thinking about the consequences of falling in love with Deryn Sharp: the risks, the lies, the tricky situations, the absurdities and impossibilities and complications that he would surely encounter.

Somehow he hadn't thought of the peril to his immortal soul. Somehow he hadn't thought of _this_.

He takes a breath and braces his hands on the sides of the porcelain sink. The heat in his lower abdomen has hardly abated; if anything, dressing has made it worse. His skin seems to have become overly sensitive, so that the brush of pyjama fabric feels… extraordinarily nice.

_It's a sin_, he tells himself. _One that you've already committed tonight - and last night as well. Stop, now, before you compound matters._

He tries instead to think of dull things (such as the scientific papers he's currently translating for the Zoo), and is experiencing some success when, unbidden, a memory seizes him: Deryn's mouth hot on the skin just in front of his ear, her breath hitching, her voice trembling as she says, _Alek, please_ -

The heat blazes fiercely higher, and he squeezes his eyes shut. The bathroom is stifling; the steam from his bath is choking him. He opens his eyes and looks at his fogged-over reflection, then away. It's fortunate that guilt and shame are not actually fatal.

Still... _You're bound for confession anyway,_ a mischievous voice whispers in his mind. _What does it matter, if you tell the priest "five" instead of "four"?_

The voice sounds suspiciously like Deryn.

He can imagine her here right now, standing in front of him, damp and flushed pink from the bath; her short hair would still be wet, darkened to a deep honey-gold, plastered to her skin, and water droplets would be forming on the tips before slowly, slowly sliding down the smooth curving arch of her -

Window. God's wounds. If he opens the bathroom window, he can dispel the steam. And perhaps the night air will restore a measure of sanity – or at least cool the fever in his blood.

Accordingly, Alek unlatches the window, fumbling with the slick metal and swollen wood, and pushes it up. Chill air rushes in, billowing the curtains and guttering the old-fashioned gaslights, but doing absolutely nothing to shift his mind from the depraved track it seems determined to travel down tonight.

_Alek, please._

That pleading note, that small gasp, that warm flesh so tantalizingly close, had all conspired to make him reckless, and he'd tugged her shirttails free of her trousers, and pushed his hands underneath the loose fabric, and stroked her breasts as they kissed.

Not a terribly clever thing to do in an unlocked coat closet in the middle of the Zoo's administrative offices.

They'd been interrupted, of course, before anything more could happen. But in the two days since, his imagination has busily supplied potential scenarios. All of them tend to conclude with Deryn and himself doing things that only a married couple should.

And all of them tend to catch up with him in the bath. Where he knows full well that no one will be opening the door unexpectedly. Where he knows that the evidence can be washed away in a trice. Where he can pretend that his hand is –

A brisk rap on the door jolts him from his imaginings. A mercy, except it may have come a bit too late. Alek glances down at his pyjama trousers and clears his throat, hoping he doesn't sound as flustered as he actually is. "Yes, Count?"

"Your Highness, will you require anything further tonight?" Volger asks through the door. It's the sort of question a butler might ask, except there's nothing servile about it.

"No," Alek says, too quickly and too nervously. He grimaces and tries again: "No, I'm quite fine."

There's a small pause, and Alek wonders if it's possible that Volger knows exactly what he was thinking of doing. What he _has_ been doing.

God's wounds, of course it is. No doubt it's why the man knocked in the first place.

"In that case," Volger says, his tone betraying nothing, "good night, Aleksandar."

"Good night," Alek says, again too quickly. This time it's due to humiliation – but, at least, he's been sufficiently distracted from his earlier thoughts that he has hope of falling asleep tonight without further damaging his soul.

After _that_ interruption, it would take a miracle to revive his interest.

He cleans his teeth and rinses his mouth, thinking again about the scientific papers. They're something of a dusty, half-forgot curiosity, pulled from the Zoo's archives: fifty-year-old studies on fabrication from, of all people, an Austrian monk.

Useless, really.

But rather interesting irregardless. And he has learned several things about bee hybridization that he never expected… not that he ever expected to learn anything about it at all.

Alek is just preparing to put out the light and go to bed when something small and hard plinks against the window glass. Before he can do more than start in surprise, a very familiar voice hisses, "Alek!"

Delight, horror, excitement, dread – all rush swiftly through him. He goes back to the window and peers out, searching the back garden for Deryn. Nothing.

A pebble bounces off the back of his head. It stings momentarily, but the greater injury is to his pride.

With an internal sigh, he leans out farther and looks upwards. As expected, Deryn is clinging to the roofline with one hand, a foot balanced on the edge of a brick that juts out a minute fraction from the rest, leaning out to get a good angle on the bathroom window.

And apparently oblivious to the fact that she's three storeys above the ground.

"Are you mad?" he demands in a heated whisper.

"Aye," she says, grinning, tossing away the other pebbles clutched in her free hand. They rain down on the back garden in a rattling, plinking patter. "Now move your bum, _Dummkopf_, I'm climbing down!"

Alek hastily pulls away from the window. Her muddy boots hit the sill a moment later, and then she half-slides, half-scrambles into the bathroom feet-first.

Her jacket is runched up, her scarf is stained, her hair is mussed beneath her cap, and her nose and cheeks are red with cold. Standing before her in only his pyjamas and stocking feet, he is hardly better dressed.

He doesn't care. He wants to kiss her.

He wants to do considerably more than that, in fact, and he's already made the heady realization that tonight they might just be able to.

And that brings him rather sharply back around to his original problem. God's wounds, he doesn't need more temptation! Is this some sort of _test_?

"What are you doing here?" he asks, trying to keep his voice down.

She shrugs, tugging her clothes straight and pulling off her scarf and cap, then pushing a hand through her hair. "I missed you. I wanted to see you, and I reckoned this was the easiest way."

He shakes his head, dumfounded (but not really that surprised) at her idea of "easy". She's favoring her leg, he notices, and decides to focus on that. "Did you walk all the way here? Where's your cane?"

"It's not that far," she whispers, dismissing miles of cold and dangerous London streets with one short sentence. Then she pauses, looks him up and down, and grins wickedly. "Though if I'd taken a cab, I might've caught you in the bath, aye?"

The idea of her catching him in the bath – especially considering what he was actually _doing_ in the bath – nearly stops his heart. He's not certain if he's appalled or not. "Ah," he manages. "Yes."

Deryn tilts her head, eyes narrowing, grin transforming slowly into a smirk. God's wounds. Are his sins that obvious to everyone, or only to the clever people who know him best?

Still torn between hope and fear, he waits for the accusation, the joke, the sly acknowledgement, but instead she merely steps forward. Settles a hand on his side, just over his hip, and murmurs into his ear, "Let's go to your room."

Alek knows what the proper response would be: _No, and let me show you to the door; I shall call you a cab home_.

Her hand is burning through the fabric of his pyjamas, and every scandalous, sinful scenario he imagined earlier seems colorless and faded in comparison to the living moment.

He takes a breath, and considers his options carefully.

It's not a sin to kiss the girl he's going to marry.

It's not a sin to take her shirt off while he does so, either.

Is it?

_Of course not,_ that voice says. _And it's much more fun than doing things by yourself._

"Mm?" she prompts, brushing the tip of her nose across his cheek. Her fingers tighten against his side; her hip bumps his. Fire blazes.

"In just a minute," he says, and kisses her.


	4. Words

A soft gasp. His hand strokes her hair. "Deryn."

She smiles. Moves her mouth down another inch, then back up.

His skin is hot under her lips. Salty. Wet. She hums.

"God's wounds," he says. His fingers grip her skull. "Deryn, _Liebe_, _bitte_ –"

_Closer_, she thinks;_ not there yet._ She changes the angle, the pressure.

He sucks in a sharp breath. Fingers tighten; not painfully. Promisingly.

_There_.

"_Mein Gott_," he says, voice hoarse.

She knows she has him. Smiles again.

Keeps on until the only Clanker-talk he's capable of is _Ja, ja, ja_…

Until he's out of words altogether.


	5. Words, part 2

Nerve endings offering less consistent feedback than walker controls, Alek measures his success by Deryn's cursing:

_Blisters_ when he bites at the join of her neck and shoulder.

_Barking spiders,_once or twice, when he reaches her chest.

(The same trick, performed on her navel, will only make her laugh uncontrollably.)

_Sodding brilliant_when he finds the secret warmth of her.

With a scrape of teeth –

"_Bloody h-hell_!"

Back arching. Heels pressing into his shoulders.

He lifts his head, swallowing against the taste of victory, feigning indifference: "Hm? Shall I continue?"

"Clanker bastard," she says, breathless, grinning. "You'd sodding better."


	6. Pictures

Deryn does a bit of skylarking and slips off to the head at half-seven, just before they're due to leave the Zoo offices. Dr. Barlow makes a point of being home for dinner whenever she's in London, so Deryn's duties as the lady boffin's "personal assistant" are usually over and done at a convenient hour. Early enough tonight to have dinner with Alek.

Quite nice, if you ask her.

She checks around the head to make certain no one's skulking about before ducking into a stall. Within moments, she has her jacket off. Tie loosened. Suspenders down. Shirt unbuttoned.

And the bindings...

Blisters, that's a relief.

She unwraps the sodding things and gingerly feels the skin beneath them. It's red and tender where the cloth dug in all day, and once again she reconsiders fussing about with all of this blether.

"I can't see the difference," Alek had told her last month, "and I rather think I'm looking more closely than anyone else."

She'd snorted and kissed her daft Clanker until he did more than _look_.

Deryn's hoping for more than looking tonight, too. Volger's attending some deadly dull meeting about fabricated beasties breeding in the wild, which means the house that he and Alek are letting will be empty of chaperons.

She rolls up the bandages and shoves them into a jacket pocket, then sets her clothes to rights and exits the stall. She stands back from the small mirror over the sink and checks the fit of her jacket. Alek's right; she can't see much difference. Still, better safe than not. Here at the Zoo, everyone's an expert in anatomy, and most think her name is Dylan.

Maybe she ought to put the bindings back on? But no, she'll be leaving in a few moments – no one's going to catch her out. And this way, she doesn't have to waste time later, fumbling to undo the things when her blood is singing and Alek's breath is hot on her neck.

_Aye, tonight should be lovely,_ she thinks, grinning at herself in the mirror: a good dinner and lots of time to mess about. Maybe she can bring Alek around to the idea of doing without trousers.

Anticipation itches at her palms and slides a bright dart though her belly. Suddenly the soft cotton of her shirt feels too tight against the poor, abused skin of her chest.

Her reflection's grin becomes pure dead wicked.

"Aha, Mr. Sharp. A cat with a canary tonight, are we?" a man's voice says behind her.

Barking _spiders_. She starts – can't help it – and masks her embarrassment with a scowl at the intruder. Or at least she hopes she does. Of all the sodding times to be walked in on – and of all the _people_ to walk in on her.

Percy Elsworth lets the door swing shut behind him and saunters over to the sink. Deryn steps aside, though she doesn't like it. Elsworth is one of the lady boffin's laboratory assistants, a student at Cambridge, studying to be a boffin himself. He's young, rich, handsome, and a complete bum-rag.

Worst of all: he's clever.

She shrugs, crossing her arms over her chest. The gesture looks suitably hostile, and ought to hide anything her tailoring doesn't. "Aye, and why not?"

Elsworth smirks at her sidelong, then begins carefully examining his hair in the mirror. He uses brilliantine, which Deryn thinks smells disgusting. Probably doesn't feel much better, if you're the lass running your fingers through it.

"You'll be stepping out with a girl, I suppose," Elsworth says.

She shrugs again. He's blocked her path to the door, and anyway leaving would be a sign of defeat. "The Barlows have a bloody good chef. I reckon I'll stay in."

Another sidelong smirk. Elsworth flicks his eyes from her boots to her own hair (no pomade for her). "You _do_ have a girl, don't you, old chap?"

Deryn feels the lines of a trap being drawn around her. Trouble is, she's not certain what the trap is about. He might've figured out her secret, or he might think Dylan's one of those who fancy other lads (in which case Alek's in for it too), or he might be up to something else entirely. Bum-rag.

She snorts and rolls her eyes. "Don't be daft. When have I had the time to find a girl?"

Elsworth removes a comb from his pocket and leans forward, studying his reflection again before flicking the comb through his hair. "Hmm, quite true, I'm sure. Quite true. Working for the doctor as you do."

The lines draw tighter. "Blisters, what does it matter to _you_, Elsworth? Asking me to dinner, are you?"

He barks a short laugh and tucks the comb away again. "Hardly, Sharp," he says, voice dry. "I had thought to offer a remedy to your current dilemma – for a nominal fee, of course."

"Of course," she echoes, mocking.

Elsworth reaches into a different pocket of his jacket and withdraws a small brown paper envelope. "Here," he says lightly, tossing it to her. The smirk is going full-force. "Have a look."

Deryn would sooner stick her hand into one of the glass cages in the Reptile House, but she can't back down from the implied challenge. Sodding boys.

She works open the gummed-down flap as if it's the most boring thing she's done all day, and shakes out the contents into her hand. She finds herself looking at the back of a set of postcards – or rather _cartes postales_, as they've a space marked out for _l'adresse_ .

She snorts again.

"The unenlightened do rush so quickly to judgment. Turn it over," Elsworth instructs.

She cuts him a glare. "_Dummkopf_, I know exactly what these are. I've been to Paris."

With a ship full of airmen who had exactly one night of shore leave in the City of Lights. She'd got quite an education the next few days, listening to the riggers reliving their adventures with _les filles_. Some had immortalized the occasion with a few souvenirs… such as postcards sold in discreet brown paper envelopes.

Elsworth's eyebrow lifts, but the smirk doesn't disappear. "Ah, yes. I forget how _well-traveled_ you are, Mr. Sharp. Still – humor me."

Deryn sighs, as if this is all tiresome, and flips the cards over. Exactly as she suspected: the top postcard has a picture of a girl posing on a divan, wearing a long chain of pearls, a faintly bored expression, and not much else. A quick shuffle reveals that the rest are just as indecent.

"I ought to turn you over to Dr. Barlow," she says, waving the postcards about. "Peddling filth like this."

"But you won't," Elsworth says. He examines his fingernails, then checks his slicked-back hair in the mirror once more. "A young man in your position, lacking female companionship and the means to procure it – don't pull such a face, Sharp, I know you earn a pittance. I'm offering these for sale at a very reasonable price. Very reasonable indeed."

The trap snaps shut. Blisters, if she takes the things, Elsworth could report _her_.

_I say! I'm afraid that I discovered Sharp looking at the most vile photographs…_

He's a skilled enough liar that some of the other boffins might believe him, even though Dr. Barlow won't. However, the lady boffin would be hard-pressed to defend her innocence without revealing that Dylan Sharp has no reason to look at naked girls.

But if she doesn't take the postcards, she could be opening herself – and probably Alek – to a much larger set of problems.

And if she breaks the bum-rag's nose… well, that's not going to solve anything, either.

Elsworth has her foxed. Pure and simple.

She narrows her eyes, glancing at the postcards and then at Elsworth. "How reasonable?" she hedges. Maybe he'll think she's stalling because she's poor and tightfisted.

Elsworth lifts his shoulder in a careless shrug. "One pound."

"Barking spiders!" she exclaims, because she _is_ poor and tightfisted. "That's bloody robbery!"

Openly amused, Elsworth says, "I have substantial costs to defray, regarding procurement and importation. One pound."

Deryn thinks over the contents of her pockets (twelve shillings and a handful of pence) and decides to bid low. It's a brilliant reason not to take the damned postcards – a last, unquestionable way to slip through the trap. "I've only got eight shillings with me."

Elsworth sighs heavily. "I suppose I ought to take pity on the destitute… All right, old chap."

And that's how she finds herself dropping eight bob into Elsworth's slimy grasp.

He smirks at her and mimes doffing a cap. "A pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Sharp."

"Aye," she says, scowling at him.

Percy Elsworth whistles as he leaves the head. It's a merry tune that makes her want to run after him and punch him hard in someplace soft.

"Bollocks," Deryn says. She looks around the head, and then, helplessly, at the brown paper envelope in her hand.

_What in the bloody hell am I going to do with __**these**__?_

.

.

.

**Note:** £1 in 1916 was _a lot_. This was the era of nickel movies ("nickelodeons") and penny candy, after all.


End file.
